Japanese music often uses random English words. You'll be listening to a verse and chorus in only Japanese, and suddenly the singer will bust out 'only you forever', or 'I'm just a woman', in English. I suppose these words serve a decorative purpose...?
Sometimes, a Japanese artist will sing half their song - or a whole song - in English. How well this works depends considerably on the skills of the artist.
Monkey Magic, Orange Range
Listen to the song and try to imagine what they're saying...
The first time I heard their version of this song, I didn't even realise they were singing English. Sure, it didn't sound quite Japanese, but the pron was SO bad I wasn't sure. This is what I heard:
Punkama ei gadda mountain da
A punky is monkey got at the top
He knew every magic bisu unto the sun
This gaja everyone could hack some for
(Actual lyrics:
Born from an egg on a mountain top
The punkiest monkey that ever popped
He knew every magic trick under the sun
To tease the gods and everyone and have some fun)
Treat or Goblins, Megumi Hayashibara
Listen to the song.
'Monkey Magic' is my pick for 'most poorly pronounced English in a song' I've heard, but 'Treat or Goblins', which is an anime theme song, gets my pick for 'weirdest and most nonsensical English in a song'.
When she sang the English parts, I could tell there was something strange about them - they didn't sound like Japanese - but I had no idea what she was saying or what language it was. After I looked up the lyrics, I wasn't surprised.
Patch, patch with something red, like a maraschino cherry, and frozen
cranberry.
Chut, chut with someone hot, like an equilitarian, and Yam-yngdourian.
Fad, fad with something cool, like a hidden luminary, and will-o-the-wisp, too.
Yeah.
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OMG, both songs have killed me xD
ReplyDeleteUsually, Japanese singers aren't good at English. Even when are some that their pron is not bad, maybe they have a little accent (which is normal if they're not fluent), but others are just simply horrible, like the examples you have posted. Then, you have some exceptions, like Angela Aki, Def Tech or Monkey Majik (I recommend it to you if you don't know them already ^^), but their "trick" is that they were born abroad, they have foreign parents or both things, though there are also Japanese exceptions :D
Oh, I also want to comment you something related with the kanji study materials that you posted some days ago. I don't know if you have a cellphone with an Android OS, but in any case, I just found an interesting app to kana and kanji studies. It is called Obenkyo.
There are lot of apps for the purpose, but I find this one quite friendly, simply and complete. It has lots of interesting options as you can see, maybe not to study directly with it, but I think it can be complement really well with other study materials ^_^
Yes, I agree the 'being born abroad' (etc) helps. I've heard quite a few Japanese singers who can manage nice-sounding, if accented, English. Others produce more of a katakana-ised English, which you can still understand if you're familiar with Japanese pronunciation. And then there's that Orange Range song, which just sounds like they were drunk and not even trying. -_-
ReplyDeleteCheers for the link. It does look like a good app, but I don't have any gadgets I could use it with. ^_^ At any rate, I already have so many study materials I'm too lazy to use, I probably don't need to be getting more. ^_^